Drizzt sniffed the stagnant air several times, then he stood still and closed his eyes, letting his ears provide all the external input. He heard nothing, save the beating of his own heart, so he checked his gear to ensure that all was secure and started to climb down the shaft, taking care amid the dangerously loose rubble.
He nearly made it silently down the sixty feet to the lower corridor, but a single stone skidded down before him, striking the corridor's floor with a sharp crack at almost the same instant that Drizzt's soft boots quietly came down from the wall.
Drizzt froze in place, listening to the sound as it echoed from wall to wall. As a drow patrol leader, Drizzt had once been able to follow echoes perfectly, almost instinctively discerning which wails were rebounding the sound, and from which direction. Now, though, he had difficulty sorting through the echo's individual sounds. Again he felt out of place, overmatched by the brooding darkness. And again he felt vulnerable, for many denizens of the dark ways could indeed follow an echo trail, and this particular one led directly to Drizzt.
He swiftly traversed a virtual maze of crisscrossing corridors, some veering sharply and descending to pass beneath others, or climbing along natural stairs to new levels of winding ways.
Drizzt sorely missed Guenhwyvar. The panther could sort through any maze.
He thought of the cat again a short time later, when he came around a bend and stumbled upon a fresh kill. It was some type of subterranean lizard, too mutilated for Drizzt to figure out exactly what. Its tail was gone, as was its lower jaw, and its belly had been gashed open, its innards devoured— Drizzt found long tears in the skin, as though it had been raked by claws, and long and thin bruises, like those made by a whip. Beyond a pool of blood a few feet from the corpse, the drow found a single track, a paw print, in a shape and size very similar to one Guenhwyvar might make.
But Drizzt's cat was hundreds of miles away, and this kill, by the ranger's estimation, was barely an hour old. Creatures of the Underdark did not roam as did creatures of the surface; the dangerous predator was likely not far away.
Bruenor Battlehammer stormed along the passageway, his grief stolen, for the moment, by undeniably mounting rage. Thibbledorf Pwent bounced along beside the king, his mouth flapping one question after another and his armor squealing annoyingly with every movement.
Bruenor skidded to a stop and turned on the battlerager, put his angry scar and angry scowl in line with Pwent's bushy-bearded face. "Why don't ye get yerself a bath!" Bruenor roared.
Pwent fell back and began to choke on the command. By his estimation, a dwarf king ordering a subject to go take a bath was roughly the equivalent of a human king telling his knights to go out and kill babies. There were some lines that a ruler simply did not cross.
"Bah!" Bruenor snorted. "Good enough for ye, then. But go and grease that damned armor! How's a king to think with yer squeakin' and squealin'?"
Pwent's head bobbed his agreement with the compromise, and he bounded away, almost afraid to stay, afraid that the tyrant King Bruenor would again demand the bath.
Bruenor just wanted the battlerager away from him—he didn't really care how he accomplished that task. It had been a difficult afternoon. The dwarf had just met with Berkthgar the Bold, an emissary from Settlestone, and had learned that Catti-brie had never arrived in the barbarian settlement, even though she had been out of Mithril Hall for nearly a week.
Bruenor's mind raced over the events of his last meeting with his daughter. He recalled images of the young woman, tried to scrutinize them and remember every word she had said for some clue as to what might be happening. But Bruenor had been too absorbed on that occasion. If Catti-brie had hinted at anything other than her intentions to go to Settlestone, the dwarf had simply missed it.
His first thoughts, when talking with Berkthgar, were that his daughter had met some trouble on the mountainside. He had almost called out a dwarven contingent to scour the area, but, on an impulse, had paused long enough to ask the emissary about the cairn being erected for Wulfgar.
"What cairn?" Berkthgar had replied.
Bruenor knew then that he had been deceived, and if Catti-brie had not been alone in that deception, then Bruenor could easily guess the identity of her coconspirator.
He nearly took the wooden, iron-bound door of Buster Bracer, a highly regarded armorer, off its hinges as he burst in, catching the blue-bearded dwarf and his halfling subject by surprise. Regis stood atop a small platform, being measured so that his armor could be let out to fit his widening girth.
Bruenor bounded up beside the pedestal (and Buster was wise enough to fall back from it), grabbed the halfling by the front of his tunic, and hoisted him into the air with one arm.
"Where's me girl?" the dwarf roared.
"Settle …" Regis started to lie, but Bruenor began shaking him violently, whipping him back and forth through the air like some rag doll.
"Where's me girl?" the dwarf said again, more quietly, his words a threatening snarl. "And don't ye play games with me, Rumblebelly."
Regis was getting more than a little tired of being assaulted by his supposed friends. The quick-thinking halfling immediately concocted a ruse about Catti-brie having run off to Silverymoon in search of Drizzt It wouldn't be a complete lie, after all.
Looking at Bruenor's scarred face, twisted in rage, but so obviously filled with pain, the halfling could not bring himself to fib.
"Put me down," he said quietly, and apparently Bruenor understood the halfling's empathy, for the dwarf gently lowered Regis to the ground.
Regis brushed his tunic straight, then waggled a fist before the dwarf king. "How dare you?" he roared.
Bruenor went back on his heels at the unexpected and uncharacteristic outburst, but the halfling did not relent.
"First Drizzt comes to me and forces me to hold a secretI' Regis expounded, "then Catti-brie comes in and pushes me around until I tell her. Now you. . What fine friends I have surrounded myself with!"
The stinging words calmed the volatile dwarf, but only a little. What secret might Regis be hinting at?
Thibbledorf Pwent bounded into the room then, his armor squeaking no less, though his face, beard, and hands were certainly smeared with grease. He stopped beside Bruenor, surveying the unexpected situation for just a moment.
Pwent rubbed his hands eagerly in front of him, then ran them down the front of his cruelly ridged armor. "Should I hug him?" he asked his king hopefully.
Bruenor slapped a hand out to hold the eager battle-rager at bay. "Where's me girl?" the dwarf king asked a third time, this time quietly and calmly, as though he was asking a friend.
Regis firmed his jaw, then nodded and began. He told Bruenor everything, even his role in aiding Catti-brie, in handing her the assassin's dagger and the magical mask.
Bruenor's face began to twist in rage again, but Regis stood tall (relatively speaking) and dispelled the rising ire.
"Am I to trust in Catti-brie any less than you would?" Regis asked simply, reminding the dwarf that his human daughter was no child, and no novice to the perils of the road.
Bruenor didn't know how to take it all. A small part of him wanted to throttle Regis, but he understood that he would simply be playing out his frustration, and that the halfling was really not to blame. Where else could he turn, though? Both Drizzt and Catti-brie were long gone, well on their way, and Bruenor had no idea of how he could get to them!
Neither did the scarred dwarf, at that moment, have any strength to try. He dropped his gaze to the stone floor, his anger played out and his grief returned, and, without another word, he walked from the room. He had to think, and for the sake of his dearest friend and his beloved daughter, he had to think fast.